


Old Ties

by blinksxoxo



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: >1000, Challenge fic, Drabble, Gen, HP Endurance, hpendurance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 08:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1338769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blinksxoxo/pseuds/blinksxoxo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s funny, Cho thought, how things were so different here and now than they were there and then, but still the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Ties

        It was snowing as Cho climbed into her car after Anthony’s funeral. She thought that maybe the weather would hold off, at least for the rest of the day to let her mourn with the sun streaming in through the front windows. After the war, she tried to stay in touch with everyone, with Marietta and Michael and even Roger Davies, but it was just too much. She started working in a pub in London, a little Muggle hole-in-the-wall joint where she met Anthony. Thirty years later, their son practically a Muggle himself, Cho found herself alone in a world void of magic.

       She climbed up the stairs to the square house in the quiet neighborhood in Surrey, a quaint enough place to keep peace. Michael was away at Uni, a sort of Muggle training program after school is over. She thought it was an unnecessary waste of everyone’s time, but Anthony had insisted the Michael needed to go to “further his opportunities.” Now she was alone.

       The snow was thick outside, blanketing the ground and covering up the scar on the hill where her husband was going to stay for the rest of her life. Widowed at thirty-seven, could you believe it? She thought about Professor Lupin, lying next to his wife with the pink hair, Tonks. Although her hair wasn’t pink after she died, when they were there on the stone Hogwarts floor.

       She was glad she had lost touch with everyone. There was so much death back then, and now, even without Anthony, Cho thought she would still be better off without all of the turmoil back home. There were trials and trials after the war, and they would have wanted to have her testify, and it was easier to dissolve into the grey Muggle world without all of the theatrics of politics and “justice.”

       She stood up off the couch she was reclined on, straitening her legs to rid herself of the cramp in her calve she had since the battle. There was a scar running up that leg, a residual effect of the fighting. She felt hollow inside, like she hadn’t since then. It’s funny, Cho thought, how things were so different here and now than they were there and then, but still the same. She still had no friends, not really. There were some women who talked to her at the library, and some who invited her out with them every once in a while, and she would smile and go with them, but their lives were so simple and clean cut. Janice slept with men who weren’t her husband, and Caroline puked after she ate, and Cho thought it was all very beneath women to be so sad.

       She went to her bedroom, and rooted around in the back of her closet. A slim box hit against her hand and she pulled it out, lifting the wooden lid and peering into the silk lined box, her old black walnut wand, eleven and a half inches, with its twisting, contorted shaft. The core was unicorn hair, a stable, constant provider of spells, and she felt the unfamiliar weight in her hand once again, a familiar spark tingling through her hand.

       When she was eleven, Ollivander had pulled this wand first, and, as was usual with the eccentric old man, it was her perfect fit. She moved back towards the front room, the snow was coming down even harder, and there were at least 8 centimeters on the ground now. When she flicked her wrist, a candle across the room lit, and within minutes she had a kettle boiling in the kitchen and the curtains half drawn across the windows. A strength filled her again, a warmth running through her body around the emptiness.

       “Expecto Patronum, “ Cho muttered under her breath, thinking of light kisses and Anthony’s smile. Nothing happened.

       “Expecto Patronum, “ she repeated, stronger, thinking of Michael romping in the snow on his third birthday after they cancelled his party because no one could make it out. The snow had been over his head. A spark travelled through her wand, but her swan didn’t appear.

       A third time, with a wave of blue emanating. A fourth with the fluttering sound of wings.

       The fifth time, she screamed, frustrated, and as the winged form swam in a nonexistent pond in front of her eyes, tears fell from the end of her cheeks, plunging to the ground. But she wasn’t sad, no. Cho leaned down close to the corporeal water fowl,

       “Send a message to Mum for me. Tell her I’m alright. Go to Angelina Weasely as well, tell her I’d like to have tea sometime, maybe talk about Quidditch. I’m so behind.”

       The swan dissipated, tracing a path through the walls and away before Cho could think about it. She wouldn’t have to tell Michael, or she could. It wouldn’t matter. He wanted to be away from home so urgently, she doubted he would be home very often.

       That night, Cho sat sipping out of her favorite cup, letting the warm porcelain heat her cold hands. She set the tea cup down on the end table, and looked up as a faint blue light came into the room. A sparrow, flittering and faint, set upon the table, and Angelina’s voice rang out:

       “I would very much like to talk Quidditch again, Blue Lightning. Roxanne will be coming along, she just finished school last spring, and, as the Ravenclaw Seeker tends to be, is a complete know-it-all about her sport.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Alright. HP Endurance Challenge fic #1 complete.  
> Level: Hard  
> Character: Cho  
> see tumblr(.)com/tagged/hpendurance for other fics in the challenge


End file.
